Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Why Big Media Slimes Al Gore

By Robert ParryOctober 16, 2007

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has a point when he describes the rabid reaction of right-wingers to Al Gore, with the latest foaming at the mouth over the former vice president winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming.

But the Right is not alone in its pathological demeaning of Gore. The major news media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, have taken their share of unfair shots at Gore, ironically for reasons similar to those that Krugman attributes to the Right.

5 comments:

We who seek to convince Al Gore to run for President are not waiting. We are taking action to place his name on ballots, with committed delegate slates and we will go to Denver to seek his nomination. In California we are well organized and we are in the process of collecting signatures, not on straw polls, but on Nominating Petitions, county by county, in order to submit 500 valid signatures of registered California Democrats in each of the 53 Congressional Districts in the State, by Dec 4th 2007.

Thank you Dr. Dean for showin’ us how…

While I cannot speak for the rest of the State and we are indeed just beginning this effort, bayarea4gore began collecting signatures at Flint Center in Cupertino, where Mr. Gore addressed capacity crowds of 2800 on 10/8, 10/9 and 10/11 as part of the ongoing Celebrity Forum Speakers Series. We fielded volunteers each night and manned a table with banners, buttons and stickers. Over the course of the three nights of appearances by Mr. Gore we collected almost 600 signatures from a number of Bay Area counties. The response from the people in attendance, who sign up for a several months long program which has a years long waiting list and are not exactly a cross section of Progressive Democrats or indeed even Californians, was good on Monday, better on Tuesday and off the charts by Thursday night. We are now prepared and ready with a small army of experienced volunteers to quickly complete the Bay Area counties and reach out to more remote areas to help other groups.

In 2003 Al Gore asked us not to do this, he said he would not be a candidate… He quit shaving and endorsed Dr. Howard Dean, and we listened. He has made no move in 2007 to do this, although we are far more visible and active now than we were in late 2002 and early 2003. If he asks us to cease in this cycle, we will listen and let me assure everyone that we will remain committed progressive Democrats. But as far as I can tell he is shaving everyday, looking great and is by now the most practiced and relaxed stump speaker in America, and he has a message of overwhelming moral imperative.

We are not kids, this ain’t our first rodeo and we aren’t partial to tiltin’ at windmills… We are quite serious and we know where the levers are and how to use ‘em… You could ask Richard Pombo, but he is unavailable for comment just now… We believe not only that Al Gore is the best choice to be the 44th President; we believe that what we are doing right now is the most important thing we could be doing, right now, to elect a man of wisdom and stature, a man capable not only of healing the wounds and depredations of the recent years of war, neglect and avarice but also of leading our nation on a sure path to a future where America is always part of the solution, a future where America can be believed and believed in again.

Thanks for this excellent and comprehensive post. And a big thanks for keeping the story of the theft of the 2000 election front and center. Keep it up! If only Gore had contested and not been "gracious".

I would like to know Robert Parry's opinion about the criticism of Gore coming from the Left field-- most notably from Joshua Frank and Alexander Cockburn.http://tinyurl.com/3xf97fhttp://tinyurl.com/26xw9x

I think both argue strongly that Gore is hardly what he represents himself to be.

Myself, I tend to think that Gore's true character incorporates many contradictions. I feel he is a weak and tragic character who too often compromised his values in a political culture that has encouraged him to do so.

I believe the most noble and courageous thing he could do now is to confess his own ethical capitulations to reveal the depth of our broken political system for the sake of allowing it to heal.

Unlike Cockburn and Frank-- who I think nail the outcome of his actions quite well-- I tend to still want to apologize for Gore, having sensed in him many years ago a core of good character that became deeply conflicted. But how will we ever know, unless Gore were to come clean about his choices and a recognition of his own mistakes?

I do not expect that however because his loyalty to his party and friends appears to be more important to him than his loyalty (as great as it is) to the Constitution and the American people.

He recuses himself from running now just as he recused himself from upholding the wishes of voters in 2000: from some false and antiquated sense of honor-- one that ultimately can only be interpreted as cowardice.

"Myself, I tend to think that Gore's true character incorporates many contradictions. I feel he is a weak and tragic character who too often compromised his values in a political culture that has encouraged him to do so."

I would call his very strong support and active media campaigning for "free trade" agreements' such as NAFTA and for the WTO, etc. in '93 such a lapse, unless he naively believed that these agreements would have very strong worker, environmental, and consumer safety rights and would encourage equity among the classes. Of course, we know it has done precisely the opposite; I'd love to hear his opinions now of the WTO, IMF, all the "free trade agreements." I haven't heard him asked, but I think this may be a case of him compromising his beliefs. It had to be pretty obvious that globalization was going to benefit the very top multi-national compocracy and damage much else, for someone as intelligent and informed as he, even in '93???

Why does this global warming debate have to be "right" versus "left", both sides telling lies and quoting un-truths and rumors without any simple research.

For Robert Parry, let me tell you a few facts about the Tuvalu Islands:

1) Not a single citizen has been evacuated due to global warming.

2) New Zealand does not yet have a policy to accept a single citizen as environment refugees.

3) Tuvalu does NOT have an evacuation plan due to global warming.

4) Many Tuvaluans do have concern over global warming and the effects on there country, but thay know that it is not going to happen overnight like a sudden earthquake, that it may take 25, 50 or 100 years or even more.

I did enjoy Al Gore's presentation for the most part, but was very disappointed that the Pacific Islands evacuation falsehood was able to sneak in, when a little research on such a drastic claim could have easily avoided such sensationalism.